Method for Interacting Via an Internet Accessible Address-Book Using a Visual Interface Phone Device

ABSTRACT

From a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device, a user navigates an Internet based address-book, and upon finding a desired record in the address-book, the user will cause a server associated with the address-book to initiate a call or a message to a device associated with the electronic address stored in the record (e.g. telephone number, VOIP address, email address, etc.). This is done by the server (A) receiving access to an internet accessible address-book; (B) accepting a dial-up connection from a user, wherein the dial-up is from a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device; (C) receiving navigation commands from the device; (D) sending at least one portion of a record in the address-book to the device; and optionally thereafter accepting a communications command from the device relating to an electronic address sent by the server to the device to establish a voice connection with the address or to send a message to the address.

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority from, and the benefit of, applicant'sprovisional U.S. Patent Application No. 60/803,889, filed Jun. 5, 2006and titled “METHOD FOR LOCATING AND CALLING A PHONE NUMBER IN ANINTERNET ACCESSIBLE ADDRESS-BOOK USING A VISUAL INTERFACE PHONE DEVICE”.The disclosures of said application and its entire file wrapper(including all prior art references cited therein) are herebyspecifically incorporated herein by reference in their entirety as ifset forth fully herein.

Furthermore, a portion of the disclosure of this patent documentcontains material which is subject to copyright protection. Thecopyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyoneof the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in thePatent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwisereserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention generally relates to using avisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device toenable a server-side address-book transaction. More specifically, thepresent invention relates to transactions, such as finding and calling aphone number, in an internet accessible address-book using a visualinterface enabled voice network operative phone device.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

While telephones are being used for a very long time, till today mostpeople do not enter their personal address-books into their phones,whether landline phones (such as POTS based or VOIP based), cellularphones or phones in general for several reasons:

1) It is difficult to enter letters using the phones' keypad when thereare several letters represented by one digit/button/key. In other wordsif you want to enter the letter ‘C’ you have to press the ‘2’ key threetimes. Alternatively, different predictive text programs were developedin an attempt to help users enter letters by letting them type a nameand then letting them choose the word they meant from all thecombinations of words created by the keys they typed. Still, this methodhas proved also cumbersome and most people don't use it.2) It requires them to learn how to program their phones. Since mostpeople replace their phones every 2-3 years to get a better model(new/more features, better reception, different cellular carrier etc)they find it difficult to learn how to program a new phone for thepurpose of reentering their address-book all over again in 2-3 years.3) Most phones, whether landline phones or cell phones have limitednumber of address-book records that they can keep in memory, whichrequire the user to figure out which numbers are most often used by himand only those address-book records to enter. As naturally over thecourse of time users make new friends and business acquaintances theyneed to add them to their phone's address-book which at that pointrequires them to figure out which names they use less and taking themout of their phone's address-book to make room for the new phone numbersthey would like to add.

Personal computers have enabled users for years to manage very largeaddress-books conveniently but since most of the computers are notconnected to a cell phone or a landline phone, the user still has tolook-up the person he would like to call on the computer's address-booksoftware and then dial it into his phone.

While some phones, whether landline models or cell phones, come with acable and a software that enable the user to connect the phone to hispersonal computer via the cable, to install the software that came withthe phone on his personal computer and download his address-book to thephone, it is still inconvenient since it requires the user to sync hisphone with his computer occasionally to get recently added addressesdownloaded to the phone.

Also, as noted before many of the phones do not have the capacity tostore all of the user's address-book and the user has to choose whichrecords he would like to have accessible over the phone. Price is alsoan important factor, as many of the phones with a capacity to storelarge address-books are more expensive. Usually an additional price ischarged for the cable and the synchronizing software as well.

The same is true for web-based address-books such as the Yahoo or MSNaddress-books. The user has to look up the person he would like to callon the web-based address-book and then dial the found number into hisphones.

Computers that are connected to phone lines whether POTS lines, VOIPlines over the web or cellular lines enable the user to find the personhe would like to call on the computer's address-book (whether theaddress-book is stored locally on the computer or centrally on the web)and dial to that person by asking an application to connect him to thatperson.

Under the above definitions fall the following:

1) An address-book software such as Outlook on a personal computer witha headset, microphone and a modem connected to a landline where the usercan dial directly from the software and speak to the other party via theheadset and the microphone.

2) An address-book software such as Outlook on a personal computer witha headset, microphone and an internet connection where the user can aska software application (either outlook or a different application thatcan pick-up the chosen number from the address-book software) to connecthim with the chosen phone number via VOIP over the web.3) A web based address-book software such as Yahoo address-book, MSNaddress-book, Skype address-book and others that enable a user accessingthem from a personal computer with a headset, microphone and an internetconnection to ask to be connected to a phone number of a person he foundwithin the web based address-book and a web based application tied tothe web based address-book (such as an instant messenger) will connectthe user with the chosen phone number via VOIP over the web.

Another existing application enables a user to find a number of a personhe would like to reach in an address-book software like Outlook on apersonal computer and then the application contacts a VOIP phone serviceprovider such as Vonage over the web, where at that point the VOIP phoneservice provider will call the user's landline first (the landlineprovided to the user by the service provider) and once the user answerhis landline, the phone service provider will dial the number chosen bythe user in the personal computer's address-book.

As an address-book is an important application to many people that wouldlike access to their personal address-book wherever they are, portablephone devices, which are also computers, were developed. Examples ofsuch portable phone-computer devices are the Treo smart-phone from Palmor the Blackberry from RIM. Those portable phone-computer devices enablea user to sync (short for synchronize) his phone's address-book with apersonal computer address-book where the user can easily enter newaddresses either to the phone's address-book via the phone's keyboard(in many cases a full QWERTY keyboard) or enter a new address via hispersonal computer keyboard and sync the address-books of the phone andthe personal computer so both would include the same address records.

Moreover, as some portable phone-computer devices also have internetaccess, those phones could be used to access web based address-bookssuch as the Yahoo address-book and an application on the phone wouldrecognize that a number has been chosen by the user, the phone willdisconnect from its internet connection and dial the chosen number overthe phone's voice line.

For example, a Treo phone device with an internet access receiving acellular service from Cingular (a US cellular carrier) could enable auser to access his Yahoo address-book via the phone's internetconnection and then provide the user with the option to dial a phonenumber found by the user within the Yahoo address-book. The phone willdisconnect its internet connection and then dial to the chosen phonenumber using a voice channel.

It should be noted that the described portable phone-computer devicewith an internet connection could act in the same way as a non-portablecomputer with an internet access, headset and a microphone and enable auser to access a web based address-book software such as Yahooaddress-book, MSN address-book, Skype address-book and others thatenable a user accessing them, finding a person they would like to beconnected with in their address-book and be connected to them by a webbased application tied to the web based address-book (such as an instantmessenger) that will connect the user with the chosen phone number viaVOIP over his portable phone-computer's internet connection.

While such portable phone-computer devices are very useful they are alsovery expensive. Cost of hundreds of dollars leads most users not to buythem. Also, many people find phones that have full keyboards to be toobig and prefer smaller phones that have a keypad only as a keypad isenough if you use the phone to make and receive phone calls only.

Another address-book application, offered by cellular carriers mainlyfor the purpose of allowing people to safely access their address-bookwhile driving without having to take their eyes off the road and look onthe phone screen, is an address-book application that enables its userto navigate and call people in their address-book using voice commands.

The user uploads their address-book via a web interface, either bymanually entering their address-book or by exporting their address-bookfrom a personal computer address-book software application such asMicrosoft outlook. The user can also add a limited number ofaddress-book records to his address-book via voice commands from hiswireless cellular device (Cingular, a US cellular carrier, limits thatnumber to 20 numbers for example).

In order to access the address-book, the user dials *8 for example, thenorder the system with a voice command to call the home number of Mr.John Ivanovitch.

This kind of system, while used by some people while driving, was notadopted by consumers on a large scale; for several reasons. The mainreason this application is not adopted on a large scale is due to itshigh error rate in recognizing what name was pronounced by the user. Thesystem difficulty in recognizing names vocalized by a user is due amongother things to differences between the way a name is written (in theaddress-book) and pronounced by the user, difficulties of the system tounderstand different accents and dialects as well as system sensitivityto background noises such as street noise, wind noise when driving withthe windows open, radio in the background etc.

Yet another address-book application worth mentioning was the onesupported by ADSI protocol. ADSI (Analog Display Services Interface) isthe standard protocol for enabling alternate voice and data services,such as a visual display at the phone, over the analog telephonenetwork. Developed by Bellcore in 1993, ADSI was built into devices suchas special telephones with small display screens, cable TV set-top box,personal digital assistants (personal digital assistant), pagers, andpersonal computers with telephone applications.

A popular application enabled by ADSI is Call Waiting Deluxe, anapplication that displays the name and number of an incoming call whileyou are on the phone. If you have an ADSI screen phone, several optionsare displayed on your screen including switching to the new call,forwarding the new call to your voice mail, putting the new caller onhold, playing a recorded message, or dropping the current call andswitching to the new call.

Other ADSI applications include:

-   -   Visual voice mail, the display of telephone voice mail menu        options and a list of your voice mail messages    -   Visual directory, a service that allows you to locate the        telephone number of an individual or business and, possibly at        extra charge, to download the address of that individual to your        screen phone    -   E-mail browsing, allowing you to send and receive e-mail        messages via an ADSI-enabled device.    -   Schedule-based services, faxing abilities, notification of        incoming e-mail messages, home banking, ticket purchasing, and        access to train and plane schedules

ADSI phones feature softkeys, which work much like the keys on anautomatic teller machine. Softkeys allow users to select differentoptions or activate different features, depending on which menu isdisplayed on the screen.

Unlike voice-prompt menus, which can be time-consuming and require a lotof concentration, visual menu-based prompts and softkeys work togetherto enable users to view all possible choices at one glance and makeselections at their own pace.

When ADSI was introduced, BellSouth offered the Northern TelecomPowerTouch 350, which featured an eight-line by 20-character lighteddisplay with six context-sensitive softkeys. An upgradeable module slidein and out of the base unit and offered an easy way to get new featuresas they become available without requiring the purchase of a completelynew unit. Planned enhancements at the time included modules with smartcard readers and a mini-keyboard for entering more extensive responsesto visual prompts.

The Rollout BellSouth and Nortel played key roles in the development andintroduction of the ADSI protocol. Working closely with Bellcore, theydeveloped the protocol, took it through extensive testing and trials,and introduced it to BellSouth subscribers early in 1995.

An Address-book application supported by ADSI was expected to expand theusefulness of the dial pad. For example, subscribers can use the dialpad to create and edit their personal on-line calling directories.Subscribers are able to list more entries in their calling directoriesthan they could with pre-ADSI display phones because names and phonenumbers are stored on a central server for each subscriber rather thanon the phone set. Using these large, customized directories, subscriberscan enjoy far more powerful versions of speed dialing, distinctiveringing, selective call forwarding or call waiting, and otherdirectory-based services.

It should be noted that ADSI phones did not catch-up with the massmarket. One of the reasons was price. The above-mentioned PowerTouch 350from Northern Telecom was offered for $348 dollars in 1995, which wasand still is expensive for a residential phone.

Also, worth mentioning is U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,341—ADSI web browser forretrieving internet data files which relates to A browser device andmethod for interfacing screen-display telephone terminals with theInternet. The browser device located on an ADSI capable telephoneplatform server, retrieves requested data files from an Internet siteand formats the retrieved data file specifically for display on thescreen-display telephone terminal.

As noted at the beginning of the prior art overview, despite all of themany options of different address-book applications available toconsumers, till today most people do not enter their personaladdress-books to their phones, whether landline phones (such as POTSbased or VOIP based), cellular phones or phones in general.

Alternately stated, there are two central features of today's everydaytelephone-user information experience. Firstly, the user typically hasat least one electronic address-book; which may reside on a cellulartelephone, a personal computer, or on a server of a computer network.Typically such a server is part of a web-based service provided byYahoo, Microsoft, AOL, or the likes. These electronic address-bookinteractions are generally visual. There is a great disparity betweenthe facile computer terminal data entry and data extracting capacity andthe often-cumbersome telephone keypad emulation of such functions.Nevertheless, all of these address-book systems are typical for ordinaryusers. Secondly, a common user experience typically includesindependently calling into an organization, such as an office or a bank,and finding himself listening to audio menus and navigating by using hisphone's keypad; just to find and be connected to an extension in a PBX,or to leave a message, etc. For large address-books—as represented bythese audio navigation menus, the navigation by audio playback and userkeypad feedback is drudgingly tedious. Accordingly, there is alongstanding general need to somehow combine the facile visualnavigation of address-books with the telephone call-into address-bookexperience—as typified by the calls to banks or other organizations.More specifically, there is a need to provide the benefits of visualnavigation of even ones personal address-book—when one is calling infrom a remote location; wherein this may only be actualized if one iscalling form some visual-interface-enabled telephone device. This needis most acutely felt when the telephone device is interconnected to theremote address-book via a voice-network-operative link—since that remaina typical circumstance where the bandwidth of information transfer ismost restricted. Of course, the need is most critical for an instancewhere a user would wish to remotely connect to his very ownaddress-book.

There are many address-book systems described in the prior art.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,961,414 discloses a telephone network-based method andsystem for automatic insertion of enhanced personal address-book contactdata; telephone network-based system includes an application unit tocoordinate the addition of new contact data by a user via his telephone,and/or is used in conjunction with his Web-browser or otherInternet/Intranet access device.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,956,942 discloses a multi-modal address-book; acentralized address-book that stores multi-modal contact information andthat is accessible using different devices and different communicationsmodes and formats.

US20050157858 discloses methods and systems for contact managementwherein contacts may be added to the address-book from one or moresources.

US20020006124 discloses methods and apparatus for an audio web retrievaltelephone system wherein “ . . . an alias can be used that represents anaddress that has already been input via the Web interface into thesubscriber's personal addressbook”.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,362 discloses an automatic address-book updatesystem; automates the data collection and maintenance tasks forcomputerized address-book systems; Local Exchange Carrier (LEC)maintains a customer database (identifying the name, address, telephonenumber) of their local customers; LEC identifies the address-book updateservice authorization for the subscriber, retrieves the calling/calledparty's customer database information, and transmits this information tothe subscriber's addressbooks system to populate an entry therein underthe name of the calling/called party.

Other references also describe variants of the basic approaches listedabove. These variants include: US20050243993 US20040258234 US20040166832US20040052356 US20030179864 US20020052195 US20010048676 U.S. Pat. No.6,996,227 U.S. Pat. No. 6,853,713 U.S. Pat. No. 6,792,082 U.S. Pat. No.6,707,811 U.S. Pat. No. 6,650,735 U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,635 U.S. Pat. No.5,483,586.

Now in combination these references demonstrate that the requisitecomponents for combining the best of electronic address-books withtelephone menu navigations systems exist—however they have not beencombined to address the longstanding problems described above. Thus, theusers of ordinary visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operativetelephone devices remain with the longstanding problem of tedious audiomenu navigations or inconvenient central address-book access from anordinary telephone device. Again, the need is most problematic for auser who wants to make best visual navigation usage of his own remoteaddress-book.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The aforesaid longstanding needs are significantly addressed byembodiments of the present invention, which specifically relates to amethod for locating and calling a phone number in an internet accessibleaddress-book using a visual interface phone device. The instant methodis especially useful in man-computer interactions wherein there existsvisual-interface-enabled telephone device on one side, a server capableof accepting a dialup connection on the other side, and avoice-network-operative data-communications infrastructure therebetween.

The present invention relates to basic embodiments (and variationsthereto and implementations thereof) of a method for interacting via aninternet accessible address-book (e.g. locating and calling a phonenumber in the address-book, arranging for the sending of voicemail toemail or voicemail, redirecting incoming telecommunications, and thelikes) using a visual interface phone device, wherein the address-bookis navigated via a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operativetelephone device. These basic embodiments of the method according to thepresent invention are including the steps: (A) a server, via Internet,receiving access to a user's address-book, wherein the address-book hasmore than one record; (B) the server accepting a dial-up connection fromthe user, wherein the dial-up is from a visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device; (C) the server receivingnavigation commands from the device, and the commands are for navigatingwithin the address-book; and (D) the server sending at least one portionof a record in the address-book to the device, and the server arrangingfor the at least one portion to be sent in a format readable by thevisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device.According to the first variation that we will describe in detail, theinstant method in general further includes additional steps (E) theserver accepting a communications command from the device (e.g. thecommunications command is to establish a voice connection to anelectronic address associated with a record of the address-book); and(F) the server executing the communications command (e.g. establishingthe voice connection connecting the device to the electronic address).However, other variations will be described that extend the instantmethod in other ways, which relate to incoming and/or outgoingtransactions via the same server accessible address-book.

It should be noted that the above server is referred to as the CentralAddress Book (“CAB”) Server or the Address Book Server and theabove-described service is referred to as the Central Address Book(“CAB”) Service in many instances below. Often, in the context of anon-limiting example, the CAB will be called a “user's Address-book” ora “Subscriber Address-book”.

More specifically, the instant method for locating and calling a phonenumber in (interacting via) an internet accessible address-book using avisual interface phone device relates to embodiments wherein navigationof address-book content by a remote user occurs via avisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device.Simply stated, via a device that at least has some alphanumericpresentation display—preferably one capable of showing at least a namefield from the address-book. For practical purposes, this capability issubstantially equivalent to that needed to show a caller ID—which inturn is typically a text string that a user assigns to a predeterminedincoming calling number or that a caller assigned to himself as a moredescriptive identity than the system address “telephone number”Nevertheless, a multi-line alphanumeric display would be preferred—inthat it allows a convenient scrolling function to be enabled. Accordingto more advanced embodiments, a graphics display would be even better,since a user might select a destination in his address-book by selectinga thumbnail sketch or small digital photograph or icon associated with atelephone number (or the likes) in his address-book.

These various basic embodiments of the method according to the presentinvention are including the steps mentioned above. More specifically, instep (A) a server, via Internet, receiving access to a user'saddress-book (or to a public address-book or to a private address-bookwhich the user has access permission), wherein the address-book has morethan one record—relates to a fundamental facilitation of a server havinga capability to present information from a user's address-book. Thisincludes the case where the address-book is resident on the server,where the server has received a copy of the address-book, and the casewhere the server simply acts a substantially transparent communicationsconduit to another location where the address-book is resident or wherea copy of the address-book is resident, etc. The notion of a record hererelates to a entry in an address-book that may include any of thefollowing: personal name, family name, telephone number, mobile phonenumber, facsimile number, pager number, instant messenger user name,address, email address, nick-name, thumbnail sketch, small photo, icon,affiliation, title, memo, profession, reference, special audio-clip, orthe likes. Thus the record may be a line item in a tabular list ofalphanumeric data or it may be a logical folder having alphanumeric andother data items. There are lots of ways that the server may come tohave or access the content of the address-book, and these mayinclude—for example—by email, FTP, connection via a telecommunicationsor data-communications infrastructure, via a mirror site, or the likes.

More specifically, in step (B) the server accepting a dial-up connectionfrom the user, wherein the dial-up is from a visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device—relates to a front end facilityof the server as it is interconnected to a telecommunicationsinfrastructure. On the one hand there is a bandwidth restrictive aspectto a dial-up connection that propagates in part or in whole over a voiceoperative network. On the other hand there is an upgraded hardwarefacility above the plain old telephone system user equipment—since theuser device is enable with some graphics interface, as described above.

Now, a part of the dial-up connection (e.g. at a first connection event,at this connection event per se, or thereafter) may include the serverreceiving some indication of the nature of format that the visualinterface is capable of accepting as well as the phone's hardware andsoftware capabilities. In another implementation, the server will knowwhich format the phone's visual interface is receiving based on the kindof line used to connect to the server whether it is a POTS line, a VOIPline or a cellular line. In further yet another implementation theserver will know which format the phone's visual interface supportsaccording to the phone company's equipment used to provide the phoneservice to the user. The server will recognize the phone company'sequipment according to the phone number from which the user originatedthe call to the server as the server will have a database of phonenumbers and the different phone companies that provide phone service tothose phone numbers and the different equipment they use to serve thosenumbers (whether POTS, VOIP etc). In another implementation a user willregister the kind of interface his phone supports as well as the phone'smodel with the central address book server. In another implementationthe central address book service will be offered by the phone companythat will offer it just to its subscribers and the phone company maysupport only one kind of phone's visual interface. Depending on theuser's phone hardware, there could be phones that have a backgroundmemory or a cache or a large buffer that—for example—allows storage ofmore lines of text than the display is capable of presenting at a giveninstance. Information of the phone's hardware and software capabilitiesmay lead the server to send the phone more address book records thanrequested by the user to be kept in the phone's cache so in case theuser ask for a record already in the phone's cache, the record will bepulled from the cache and a faster navigation experience of the centraladdress book will be the result. There may also be circumstances where abandwidth limitation of the voice operative telephone network causes theserver to elect a peculiar protocol that is more efficient than theordinary over voice operative network protocols for the transmittal ofalphanumeric data or graphics—according to the specifics of the serverwith device data interactions. However, it should be understood by theordinary man of the art that the server executing the method steps ofthe instant invention often will in fact be the server associated withthe method steps interconnected via intermediary server(s) to thedevice—so the actual compatibility between the address-book content andthe device must be made compatible with the device format beforereaching the device—but not necessarily by the server accessing theaddress-book. For the purposes of other embodiments of the instantinvention, an address-book that permits a non-owner user query access toan address-book is substantially equivalent to that address-book beingowned by the user for the purpose of query. That is to suggest thatthere are numerous possible relationships between the device thataccesses the address-book and the owner of that address-book. It may bethat they are the same entity. It may be that the owner of theaddress-book grants query privileges to a select few or to the generalpublic. It may be that the owner allows some select few to upload newinformation into the address-book or to suggest modifications toexisting information therein, etc.

More specifically, in step (C) the server receiving navigation commandsfrom the device, and the commands are for navigating within theaddress-book—relates to user choices that are characteristic of thestructure of the address-book, of the structure of the records therein,and or tools that may be provided for helping a user to more quicklyfind and utilize the contents of his address-book. For example, theaddress-book may be tabular, cyclic, hierarchical, or of a complexstructure that is made transparent via general purpose or structurespecific search engine query function(s), and the likes. Typically thecommands are via a keypad of the user's device—but there are alsoembodiments where the device interprets voice commands of the user—orequivalently where the server interprets voice commands of the user.

More specifically, in step (D) the server sending at least one portionof a record in the address-book to the device, and the server arrangingfor the at least one portion to be sent in a format readable by thevisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephonedevice—relates to either (I) the server accommodating a predeterminedformat specification for sending data (that the user device can bestaccept) or (II) the server interfaces with another server, which is notpart of the central address-book, and which is used to send data thatthe user device can best accept—and the central address-book servergives that server the record it would like to have sent to the userdevice in a format readable by the user's device (and the server used tosend the record to the device in a format readable by the device islocated anywhere between the central address-book server and the device)or (III) the user device accommodating receiving data in a predeterminedformat specification that the server uses for transmission, or (IIII) inconjunction with some bandwidth restrictive aspect of theinterconnection between the server and the device—or (IV) with respectto a memory or buffer capacity of the device; or (V) a combination ofany of the aforesaid. Illustratively, in another implementation, thephone device includes a cache for the purpose of making the navigationof the central address book faster. A predictive software located eitheron the phone, or on the central address book server or on both thedevice and the server attempts to predict what other records will theuser ask for and those records predicted by the software to be asked forby the user are delivered to the phone and kept in the phone's cache (ormemory or the like). Those records that were not asked for by the userat that point in time may or may not be presented to the user on thephone's screen depending among other things how large the phone screenis (whether for example the screen could accommodate more than one nameand number). If afterwards the user asks to see the records predicted bythe software, instead of sending the navigation command made by the userout of the phone to the server, the phone simply pulls the requestedrecord from the cache (as it was already placed in the cache by thepredictive software previously) and presents it on the phone's screen,resulting in a faster navigation experience of the address book for theuser (note that such an implementation requires another piece ofsoftware on the phone that will monitor the navigation commands enteredby the user and before sending the commands to the server checkingwhether the requested records are already in the phone's cache). Anexample of a prediction possibly made by such a software, if the userhas asked to receive the next record in an alphabetical order, thesoftware will arrange for the delivery of not only the record the userasked for but also for the 2 records following the record he asked forin an alphabetical order since the software will assume that the userwill likely ask for those records as well. In another example, if a usertypes the letters making up the last name of a person he would like tocall, beyond the home number record of that person that is sent to thephone in one possible implementation, the predictive software willarrange also for the work phone number, cell phone number and instantmessenger username records to be sent as well.

More specifically, in step (E) the server accepting a communicationscommand from the device, and the communications command is to establisha voice communications or a voice connection to an electronic addressassociated with a record of the address-book—relates to the user via hisdevice instructing the server to place a call to an electronic addressassociated with a record of the address book wherein the electronicaddress could be a phone number or an instant messenger usernameassociated with the name of the person the user would like to call (e.g.instruction to dial either to a telephone number or to an instantmessenger used by the party being called etc).

It should be noted that in a different instant invention implementation,the server could accept a communication command from the user using hisphone device not to establish a voice communication as in the above Step(E) but a communication command to include an electronic addressassociated with a record of the address book in a message and send themessage. For example, the user may order the server to include anelectronic address associated with a record of the address book whereinthe electronic address could be a phone number or an instant messengerusername or an e-mail address associated with the name of the person theuser would like the server to send a message to (e.g. instruction to theserver to send a SMS message to the associated telephone number or sendan instant message to the associated username or send an e-mail to theassociated e-mail address). The user in one implementation would firstwrite the message, whether a SMS or an e-mail or an instant message andthen connect to the central address book server, find the person hewould like to send the message to and the server will send the message,which it will receive from the phone, to the electronic addressassociated with the user. The server will choose the appropriate addresseither because the user would point it out that it should be an e-mailaddress for example or based on the kind of message the user would likethe server to send the server will choose which electronic address touse by it self. For example for a SMS message the server willautomatically choose the phone number associated with the person theuser would like to send a message to, with an instant message the serverwill automatically choose the instant messenger username associated withthe person the user would like to send a message to and with an e-mailmessage the server will automatically choose the e-mail addressassociated with the person the user would like to send a message to.Obviously, when the server will receive such a communication command, itwill not establish a voice connection as describe in detail below asstep (F), but instead will send the message to the electronic addressassociated with the person the user would like the message sent to. Itshould further be noted that while a SMS could be sent either from aphone or from a phone connected to the web via a web based application,and an instant message could be sent from a phone either as a SMS orfrom a phone connected to the web via a web based application and ane-mail message could be sent from a phone connected to the web, having aSMS or an instant message or an e-mail sent from a server the phonedials to in order to find the electronic address associated with theperson the user would like to send the message to, is unique and novelas it is different from the way those messages are currently being sentwith a web based application where the phone connects to a server thatprovides internet access and through that server accessing a web sitelocated on a server somewhere on the web and sending the message throughthe web based server. Obviously, sending the message using the centraladdress book server could be faster than doing it via connection to theweb.

More specifically, finally in step (F) the server establishing the voiceconnection connecting the device to the electronic address—relates tothe user (that is after all already connected to the server) using theserver to establish a telecommunications event to the electronic addressselected from the address-book. This does not preclude the user devicefrom making direct use of the electronic address—if it was transmittedto him. This really illustrates that there are at least two basic userinterface formats for interactions between the user device and theserver. According to one embodiment of the instant invention, the serveronly sends information to the device that will help the user determinethat he has selected an appropriate record of his address-book and thathe has selected a viable modality for a transaction there from—and withthat, the server completes the transaction (e.g. places the telephonecall, email, SMS, or the likes) while the user device has never receivedthe electronic address data contained in the record (for example, theuser chooses to call John Smith's home. While ‘John Smith Home’ appearson the phone's screen, John Smith's home phone number does not appear onthe phone's screen and it may not be necessary for it to appear on thescreen as the server is the one dialing to John Smith's home, not theuser). Thus, it is reasonable to consider that there is one instantvariant where the user sees only the information that will help himdecide to have a call placed from the server, and another instantvariant where the user prefers to see the electronic address, telephonenumber, or the likes.

According to a more relaxed protocol for server device interactions, thedevice received at least some electronic address data—so that in thisinteraction the device may establish the transaction directly to thatelectronic address (i.e. not via the server); or at least in some futureevent, the device may do so directly—without need for a redundant queryof the address-book. Of course market forces dictate if it would beadvised to place the call or establish the transaction directly from thedevice or via the server. Nevertheless, often the user places a highvalue on convenience, so the user may even prefer to use the serverbased interconnections facilities just because he is already connectedto the server and perhaps the server's GUI is more facile than that ofthe user's device.

Simply stated, embodiments of the instant invention intend to overcomethe limitations of current offered address-books over most availablephone devices. Those limitations are:

(1) It is difficult to enter letters on phone devices with no keyboards(and therefore difficult to enter names of people in an address-book)(2) Most phones cannot store large address-books in memory (due mainlyto price)

(3) Access to web based address-books that could enable the usage ofcheaper phones (less memory required to hold large address-books) aswell as enable people to enter their address-books over the web which ismuch simpler than doing it over the phone's dial pad, require phonesthat are capable of accessing the web, payment for web access and theuser experience is not as simple or easy as picking up a phone, findinga person in the address-book and dialing the number as it requires a fewmore steps at least—connecting to the internet from the phone, findingthe web based address-book and then either disconnecting from theinternet and calling the found number (the person the user would like tocall) or calling the person over the web via a web based applicationusually offered in conjunction with the web based address-book (such asSkype).(4) Finding and calling a phone number in a central address-book(whether the address-book is a company's address-book or a personaladdress-book uploaded via the web etc) using voice commands and/or aphone's keypad over a voice line when the system responds with voiceoutput via the phone's audio interface is tedious and cumbersome. Mainlybecause it takes a longer time to listen to a system's voice responsethan simply to see the response on a visual screen. Also when hearingthe system's response, one second of the user not being concentrated andhe might miss a word that he was told by the system and now has to askand then listen for the answer (or sometimes the entire possible menu)again. Also, voice commands are hard to decode and therefore result in ahigh error rate where the system does not understand the command or thename of the person the user would like to reach and only when the userhears the name the system decoded from his voice does he realize thatthe system made a mistake.

As most residential phones and cell phones (and other kind of phones) donot have keyboards, it is difficult to enter letters and names of peopleinto their address-books.

As most residential phones and cell phones (and other kind of phones) donot have internet connection, they could not be used to access web basedaddress-books.

As listening to a system's voice response given via the phone's audiointerface is tedious and cumbersome, navigating an address-book wherethe system responds with voice is not a desirable option.

As storing large address-books on phones require expensive memory andhardware as well as in many cases expensive synchronization software andcable to synchronize the phone's address-book with a personal computer'saddress-book, this option is also not desirable for most consumers.

It should be noted that even the users of portable computer-phones thatdo have keyboards and internet connection such as the Treo and theBlackberry, mostly use the phones' address-books (the address-booksstored on the phones), which they synchronize with their personalcomputers address-books and do not use their internet connection to finda number on a web based address-book and call it due to the fact that itis not as easy and fast as using the phone's own address-book.

The question is—is there a solution that could enable the users of mostavailable phones to benefit from an easy and fast access to theirpersonal address-books using their current devices?

The instant invention preferred embodiments provide the solution.

Most phones (both residential phones, cell phones and other phones) havea caller ID screen that enable them both to see who is calling them whenthe phone rings (function called ‘Caller ID’) or see who is calling themwhile they are already speaking on the phone (function called ‘CallWaiting Caller ID’). Both Caller ID and Call Waiting Caller ID deliverthe following on the phone's caller ID screen:

The name of the caller appears with his telephone number or just thetelephone number of the caller appears if the phone service provider cannot find the name of the owner of the phone number in public recordsdatabases.

According to the preferred embodiment of the instant invention—Findingand calling a record in a personal address-book located on a centralserver using a visual display based phone device over a voice line:

A user makes his personal address-book available over the web to theserver of the company offering the central address-book service.

The user makes his address-book available to the server by eithere-mailing his address-book to the server or uploading his address-bookfile to the server (the file could be maintained from a software such asMicrosoft Outlook or a Yahoo web based address-book for example) orproviding the server with an access to a web based address-book the useris already using such as the Yahoo address-book or the Skypeaddress-book etc (by providing the server with his user name andpassword for such web based address-book for example) or by enteringand/or editing his address-book via a web based interface provided bythe central address-book server.

The address-book server may therefore keep a copy of the subscriber'saddresbook and enable the subscriber to update the copy either directlyusing a web interface or via an agent software located on thesubscriber's PC or through other ways or the server may have access to aweb based address-book that the consumer will be assumed to keep up todate. The server may access the web based address-book every time theuser dials to the central address-book server (or when the user accessthe central address-book server in a different way) or the centraladdress-book server may access the web based address-book from time totime and make sure that it has the most up-to date copy of the user'saddress-book or if the company providing the user with a web basedaddress-book (such as Yahoo) works with the central address-bookprovider (such as Verizon) a different integration might be agreed uponwhere the web based address-book used by the user sends updates to thecentral address-book server whenever the user adds, deletes or editsrecords in his address-book.

Whenever a user would like to call someone in his central address-book,using his phone he dials to the central address-book server. The centraladdress-book server could be accessed by the user dialing a full numberof the server or if the central address-book service is provided by thecompany providing a phone service to the user, the user could dial *8for example or something else (the same way a user will dial *9 from hishome phone and get access to the voice mail service he is receiving fromhis phone company or the same way a user dials ‘1’ on his cell phone andthe cell phone connects him with the voice mail offered by his cellularcarrier). The dialed keys (*8 or something else) will be recognized bythe phone company that would then connect him with the centraladdress-book server.

Upon connection to the central address-book, the server will recognizethe user according to the phone number he called from and the digits itused to connect to the service or the phone number he called from andPIN code or by the user entering his home phone number and a PIN etc.For example, a swift and immediate access to a person's address-bookcould be provided by the server when the subscriber calls the serverfrom the telephone number that subscribed to the service, where thecalling from the home telephone number could be accepted as a permissionfrom the user to the server to give the caller an immediate access tothe address-book of the person that subscribed to the address-bookservice from that home without asking for a password such as a PIN (PIN,a Personal Identification Number could be a 4 digit combination such as1234). If several people in the same household subscribed to the centraladdress-book service, then if *8 for example was dialed from the home,the combination of the telephone number from which the call originatedand the *8 dialed from the home would lead the server to provide accessto the address-book of the first person that subscribed to the servicefrom that home. If *7 for example was dialed from the home, thecombination of the telephone number from which the call originated andthe *7 dialed from the home would lead the server to provide access tothe address-book of the second person that subscribed to the servicefrom that home.

The central address-book once recognizing the subscriber, sends to thephone the subscriber is using either the name of the person'saddress-book (‘John Smith's Address-book’) or the first record in theaddress-book (for example ‘John Adams, 212-219-1234’).

The server takes advantage of the phone's support for ‘Call waitingcaller ID’, which is the phone's ability to receive a text indicatingwho is calling the user while he is already on a call using the phone(telephone number of caller and his name if available in public records)to send the address-book records to the phone. Obviously the servercould take advantage of other phone functionalities that enable it toreceive and present text on the phone's screen while the user is on acall (the user needs to be on a call in order to send instructions tothe server how he would like to navigate the address-book as well asinstructions which record should the server connect it with forexample).

Alternatively, the user may send instructions how he would like tonavigate the address-book as well as instructions which record shouldthe server connect it with via SMS (Short Message Service) and alsoreceive the records he asked for via SMS but this implementation mightnot be as user friendly and fast as the one the user dials to the serverand receives immediate responses to his commands.

In one preferred implementation, the user dials to the server and theserver in order to send an address-book record to the phone willinterface with the servers of the phone company providing the user withhis phone service.

Through this interface the central address-book server informs the phonecompany server to send to the user the address-book record (which couldinclude name only, or name+telephone number, or telephone number only orname+instant messenger user name or any combination of letters anddigits) in such a format where the user's phone will receive theaddress-book record and present it in a similar way to the way a callwaiting caller ID would have been presented for example on the phone.More detailed examples of such implementations will be given later.

The user when receiving address-book records on the phone's screen cansend the server instructions how would he like to navigate theaddress-book or which record would he like the server to connect itwith. The instructions are sent via digits pressed on the phone's keypadfor example and sent as DTMF for example to the server or as voicecommands in another implementation.

For example, pressing of the * key on the phone will cause the centraladdress-book to send the next record. If pressed at the beginning of theconnection to the central address-book server then the first name in theaddress-book will be sent to the phone and appear on the screen(assuming that the first text to be sent to the phone is the username—‘John Smith's Address-book’ for example and not the first record).If pressed later on then simply the following record in alphabeticalorder will appear. If the # key is pressed then the previous record willbe sent by the central address-book server. If the digit 1 is pressedthen the record is chosen. If the record is a name of a person then thenext screen will show the person's work phone number, followed by a *key and then the person's mobile phone etc. If the digit 1 is pressedwhen the phone's screen shows an actual phone number (with or without aname) then that phone number will be dialed by the central address-bookserver and the user will be connected with his desired destination.Alternatively, if the digit 1 is pressed when the phone's screen showsan instant messenger user name then the central address-book server willconnect the user connected to the central address-book server with thedesired party by calling that instant messenger's user (assuming thatthis instant messenger supports VOIP calls as most instant messengerstoday such Skype and Yahoo do).

A name could easily be found faster by dialing the first letters of theperson's last name using the dial pad. The central address-book inreturn will show all the names that have the pressed digits possibleletter combinations sorted in an ascending alphabetical order. The usercan then browse through the sorted results by pressing * (next name) or# (previous name). If a name was chosen by pressing 1 and the userrealizes he made a mistake (he sees the work telephone number of theperson he chose on the screen) and would like to go back one level tothe sorted results then he would press 0. Pressing 0 always gives theuser the previous level wherever he is in the address-book (theaddress-book is like a tree in one implementation).

Obviously the above is only one implementation of the way theaddress-book could be navigated and other digits could be chosen asrepresenting instructions to the address-book server based on thepreference of the company offering the central address-book service orthe preference of the user.

The user may choose to have his address-book presented in a one leveltree where a person's work number will appear as the next record inalphabetical order after the person's home number or the user may chooseto have the address-book as a multi level tree where people names willappear in the first level and the user would have to go down one level(i.e. choose a name of a person he would like to reach by dialing ‘1’for example) to see the different telephone numbers of that person whichwill be leafs of the chosen person in a tree implementation (worknumber, home number, cell phone number, instant messenger ID etc).

Once again the above is just an example, the address-book may beorganized in different ways where a tree is only one implementation.

The instant invention Central Address-book server can also provide userswith Speed dial for desired records. The user may designate specificphone numbers with speed dial digits via a web based interface forexample.

The user may pick his phone, hear a dial tone on a residential phone orsimply dial on a cell phone and access the Speed dial of the centraladdress-book directly by dialing *82. The *82 will both connects theuser to the address-book (the *8) as well as immediately connect him tohis desired destination (speed dial 2) while showing on the phone'sscreen the name & telephone of the party being called (to which speeddial ‘2’ was assigned to).

Alternatively, the user may dial to the address-book server and thenpress **2 to have the server connect him with the telephone number heassociated to the server with speed dial ‘2’.

While the user is navigating the central address-book, incoming callswill appear as usual on the screen of the phone and since this will notbe correlated with the records the user asked from the centraladdress-book to send, the user will understand it is an incoming call hecan answer if he wants. Alternatively, the incoming call will appearwith a ## at the beginning to clearly mark the call as an incoming call.

The instant invention Central Address-book service could be offered byphone companies offering POTS or VOIP or cellular service. The centraladdress-book may also be offered by Skype or Yahoo or any other portalor company that offers a web based address-book and VOIP calls overtheir IM (Instant Messenger) or web based calling service as a method tolet subscribers benefit from their web based address-book in aconvenient way as well as possibly low cost long distance calls to theirdestination from their non-web connected phones.

The subscriber will dial the Yahoo central address-book server over avoice line for example, find the person he would like to dial to in theYahoo address-book server (he could also use speed dial over the CentralAddress-book) and Yahoo will connect the user to his destination.Companies that offer pre-pay calling or calling cards could also benefitfrom the service. All the above examples obviously not limiting othercompanies not mentioned above to offer the service.

The instant invention Central Address-book may also be used to improvethe public address-book records used by phone companies for caller ID.For example, in the US, cell phones owners are not registered in publicdatabases and therefore when they call, only their telephone numberappears without their name. If a telephone provider will also pulladdresses from the central address-book of the subscriber who isreceiving a phone call, it could show on the caller ID screen the nameof the person as it appears in the central address-book and not the nameas it appears in the public address-book (or does not appear in theaddress-book at all if it is a cell phone).

The instant invention central address-book may also be used forpersonalization purposes. A user may choose to assign differentdistinctive rings to different people within his central address-book. Aphone provider offering the central address-book could ring the user'sphone with the distinctive ring assigned by the user to the personcalling him. A user may choose to replace the ringing tone people hearwhen they call him till he picks up the call with a song where differentpeople in the central address-book will be assigned different songs tohear when they call the user till he picks up the call or his voice mailpicks up the call.

The instant invention central address-book could be used by a softwareagent on a phone to copy the central address-book or sync with it. A newcell phone could call the address-book and a software installed on thecell phone could record the book (or part of it) to the cell phone bygoing through the central address-book records. It should be noted thatthis feature might be less common as most low priced cell phones wouldnot accommodate too many addresses in their local address-book and couldnot accommodate a large address-book. Also, it will require people touse a software on the phone to do it while the central address-book doesnot require them to do so and therefore is simpler to use, and ease ofuse is very important in consumer products.

Sending Address-Book Records to Phones with ‘Call Waiting Caller ID’Functionality—

While the phone ‘thinks’ that it is a call waiting caller ID, in realityit is the same server the phone dialed to in order to get access to theaddress-book that arranges for the sending of the address-book recordrequested by the user and not another party that calls the phone whilehe is already on a call with the central address-book server. Thecentral address-book server arranges for the sending of the requestedrecord either by integrating with the phone provider server or through adifferent way, with the same outcome in this proposed implementation—thesending of the address-book record without initiating another call tothe phone.

The examples below are of possible instant invention implementationswith POTS landline phones.

Bellcore has defined three CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) types: Type1 is for interfacing to on-hook CLASS services {Custom Local AreaSignaling Services—are PSTN telephony intelligent network servicesbeyond simple voice transfer, such as caller ID (automatic numberidentification (ANI)), caller number blocking, automated call return,call blocking or screening, TCAP services, etc.} such as Caller-ID(CID), which may include the Calling Name information (CNAM), and theVisual Message Waiting Indicator (VMWI) feature. Type 2 is CID and/orCNAM but the feature works while off-hook in conjunction with the CallWaiting feature. This is called Caller-ID on Call Waiting (CIDCW) orCall Waiting Caller ID. Type 3 is for interfacing to features using theAnalog Display Services Interface (ADSI) protocols. A Type 2 CPE must becapable of interfacing to Type 1 and Type 2 features. A Type 3 CPE mustbe capable of interfacing to Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 features.

Type 1 Features (CID, VMWI)

On-hook CID (number and/or name) is transmitted on the telephone linebetween the first and second power ringing signal. The data istransmitted via Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) modulation. The longestsilent interval (between cycles) is when FSK data is transmitted. TheCPE is required to receive the FSK, decode it and display theinformation as appropriate.

Type 2 Features (CIDCW)

The CIDCW feature is used to transmit the same information as theon-hook CID feature except in this case the customer's current call isinterrupted while the data is transmitted to the CPE. This interruptionis started by the Stored Program Controlled Switching System (SPCS) bytransmitting a Call Waiting signal (440 Hz, about 300 ms) followed by aCPE Alerting Signal (CAS). The CAS is what is detected by the CPE. Upondetecting the CAS the CPE is to mute the CPE handset (transmitter andreceiver), or speakerphone microphone and speaker, send a DTMFAcknowledgment signal (ACK) and wait to receive the FSK. If a time-outoccurs after sending the ACK, the CPE is to un-mute the transmitter andreceiver and continue with normal operation.

Type 3 Features (ADSI)

ADSI provides protocols that define two different types of features.One, Server Display Control (SDC) which is used for real-time connectionto a server (via a regular telephone connection) or directly to an SPCS.SDC features are usually for transactions such as banking, visual voicemail, enhanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR), etc. SDC applicationswill display text on the CPE screen and alternately send voice toprovide more instructions. The user interacts with the application bypressing softkeys which the server has programmed to perform varioussignaling when selected. The second type of feature is called FeatureDownload (FD) or Script Interpretation. FD is used to download asemi-permanent script into the telephone. The script containsinformation which allows the phone to track various states of calls andprovide context sensitive information to the user. This will enable theuser to make better use of CLASS and Custom Calling services whichwithout FD, would require the user to remember procedures, sequences,and signaling codes. The FD script relieves the user of this burden bypresenting text and softkeys that show the user which services areavailable and the ability to activate the service with one touch of asoftkey button.

One possible instant invention implementation is for the centraladdress-book server to integrate with the phone company's serverresponsible for the call waiting caller ID and through that server sendthe address-book records requested by the user to the user's phone byhaving the phone company server send the records in a call waitingcaller ID format although there is no other caller calling the user whois now connected to the central address-book server he dialed to. Pleasenote that step (D) states that the server sending at least one portionof a record in the address-book to the device, and the server arrangingfor the at least one portion to be sent in a format readable by thevisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device;however that one portion is sent in a format readable by the phone inmany cases by the phone company's server not the central address-bookserver (the central address-book server arranges the sending in a formatreadable by the phone device by giving the phone company's server therecord that needs to be sent to the phone device and the phone company'sserver sends the record to the phone device in a format readable by thephone device) or in some cases possibly by the central address-bookserver;(in this case the central address book server arranges thesending in a format readable by the phone device by converting by itself the record it would like to send to the phone device into a formatreadable by the phone device and sending by it self the record to thephone device in that format which is readable by the phone device) SUCHthat the content is readable on the device. Specifically, this may beaccomplished by a server in a communications path between theaddress-book server and the device.

In a different instant invention implementation, the centraladdress-book server, instead of relying on the phone company's server tosend the address-book records via FSK modulation could send itself theaddress-book records via FSK modulation to Type 2 phones (phones thatsupport call waiting caller ID) by using some of the functionality of anADSI server (the server does not need to support all of ADSIfunctionality as the phones them selves don't support the ADSIprotocol).

The examples below are of possible instant invention implementationswith VOIP landline phones.

Taking advantage of the high penetration of broadband (high speedinternet access) to homes and offices, different companies startedoffering VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) based phone lines toconsumers. Consumers that sign-up for a phone service from such aprovider receive an adapter which connects to their DSL or cable modemon one hand (or to a router connected to them) and enable the subscriberto plug their analog phones into the adapter on the other hand. Theadapter converts voice to IP based packets and received packets tovoice. Those adapters support phone features such as Caller ID, CallWaiting, Call Waiting Caller ID, Three-way calling and Call Forwarding.

As both those adapters as well as the VOIP based phone service providerssupport Call Waiting Caller ID, the central address-book server, in onesuggested implementation, can interface with the VOIP based phoneservice provider's server which is responsible for the call waitingcaller ID and through that server send the address-book recordsrequested by the user to the user's phone by having the VOIP based phonecompany server send the records in a call waiting caller ID formatalthough there is no other caller calling the user who is now connectedto the central address-book server he dialed to.

In this implementation, the user can access his central address-bookfrom any telephone line provided by the phone company to which thecentral address-book server interfaces.

In an instant invention implementation where the central address-bookserver does not need the cooperation of the phone company to offer theaddress-book service over that company's phone lines, the user may dialto that server from any line provided by the same phone company.

In one suggested instant invention implementation, the user may accesshis central address-book from a phone line provided by a phone companyother than the phone company that provides him the central address-bookservice when the phone company that provides him the service eithercooperates with the phone company which he is using one of their linesto access the central address-book server (by interfacing with theirserver which is responsible for call waiting caller ID for example) orwhen the phone company that provides him with the central address-bookservice does not need the cooperation of the phone company he is usingone of their lines to access the central address-book service to providethe service.

Below are examples of possible instant invention implementations withcellular phones.

Implementing caller ID in the past was not an attractive option tocellular carriers due to the low number of handsets that supportedcaller ID functionality. However, today most handsets do support thedisplay text feature required for Caller ID functionality.

One possible instant invention implementation is for the centraladdress-book server to integrate with the cellular company's IN(Intelligent Network) server which is responsible for the call waitingcaller ID functionality and through that server send the address-bookrecords requested by the user to the user's phone by having the cellularphone company server send the records in a call waiting caller ID formatalthough there is no other caller calling the user who is now connectedto the central address-book server he dialed to.

Another possible instant invention implementation although not aspreferable, while the user's call to the central address-book providesan upstream for user's commands to the server, for downstream (requestedaddress-book records) the server will initiate another call to the userin order to take advantage of ‘call waiting caller id’ functionality ofthe phone without integrating with the phone company's server forexample (it should be mentioned that there are also otherimplementations that does not require integration with the phone companythat provides the user with a phone service). The server will have toinitiate the call as if coming from the phone number requested by theuser so the phone provider will look it up in the public database andsend the name of the sent number owner along with the phone number tothe phone. Obviously, this method is not preferable for several reasons:

1) Requires the server to initiate calls as if coming from phone numbersthat are not his

2) Limits the names that could be attached to phone numbers to the namesof phone owners that appear in public records used by the phoneprovider's call waiting caller ID service. The names do not necessarilyare the ones used by the user to describe the people in hisaddress-book. Also, as in the US cell phone numbers do not appear inpublic databases, the cell phone numbers owners names could not be sendto the user who is navigating his phone book (that of course do includethem), which is not good.3) After several rings, the call might be transferred to voice mail andthe server will have to initiate another call. If the user asks foranother name in the address-book, another call must be initiated.

It should be noted that all of the above are suggested implementations.In another instant invention implementation a phone may receive therequested address-book records via a dedicated proprietary protocol.

In another instant invention implementation, the phone it self might bea proprietary phone used to receive a VOIP based phone service in a WiFinetwork.

In another instant invention implementation, a software might beinstalled on a phone with a visual interface. Once the user dials to thecentral address-book server, the server could send the address-bookrecords by using an encoding technique that will translate the lettersand numbers of the language (English for example) to numbers where thenumbers will be sent via DTMF for example. The software on the phonewould decode the sent numbers and present the sent records on the phonescreen. The software on the phone could further send the navigation andcommunication instructions by encoding it (or simply just sending it viaDTMF for example without decoding it). Such an implementation is anexample of an implementation that allows the company offering thecentral address-book service or product to offer it without anycooperation or integration with the phone company providing the userwith his phone service. Obviously, the phone company providing the userwith its phone service could also use this implementation to offer theuser a central address-book service or product. Such an implementationalso enables the user to dial to the central address-book server andaccess his address-book from any phone line provided by whatever phonecompany.

It should further be noted that while the above description focuses on apersonal address-book, in another possible instant inventionimplementation other address-books such as the address-books (callingdirectories) of companies people are calling could also be madeavailable by the companies to users using phone devices that supportcall waiting caller ID. The companies will be using a server that willsend the callers, who will be connected with the server when dialing tothe company, the records asked by the caller in a call waiting caller IDformat. The server will be sending the records in a call waiting callerID format in the same ways the central address-book server offeringusers access to their personal address-book would have done so. Theserver would also enable a user to navigate the company's directory andcall a chosen record in the same ways the central address-book serveroffering users access to their personal address-book would have done so.

It should also be mentioned, that one possible outcome of this inventionwill be phones that will have additional buttons added to them to makethe navigation of the address-book easier. Instead of dialing the * keyto get the next record in an alphabetical order for example, the phonewill have a button with the label ‘Next’ on it. It could be that the‘Next’ button will perform the same functionality of the * key (sendingthe DTMF of * when pressed) but will offer the consumer more convenienceas they won't have to remember that * stands for ‘Next record’ and #stands for ‘Previous record’ for example. Obviously the buttons couldrepresent any functionality desired from the address-book whethernavigation functionality or other. A phone may also be offered forexample with a larger screen so more than one name and number couldappear on the screen in any given time.

Notices

The present invention is herein described with a certain degree ofparticularity, however those versed in the art will readily appreciatethat various modifications and alterations may be carried out withoutdeparting from either the spirit or scope, as hereinafter claimed. Forexample, there are substantially equivalent viable embodiments of theinstant invention that deviate from the ordering of the method steps aspresented herein. The ordinary man of the art will readily recognizethat after studying the examples herein—that one can performsubstantially the same functions in substantially the same way to yieldsubstantially the same result—without necessarily dividing thosefunctions between the server side and the device side as outlinedherein. One may configure embodiments that are virtually server sideenabled and one may configure other embodiments that are virtually userdevice side enabled, and of course those embodiments that share thefunctionality there between. It would be redundant to teach all of thesemany combinations—since the ordinary man of the art will naturallyconfigure them as necessary without any need for further inventivesteps—and thereby arrive at a working version of the method according tothe present invention.

In describing the present invention, explanations are presented in lightof currently accepted Information-Technology or Telecommunicationstheories and models. Such theories and models are subject to changes,both adiabatic and radical. Often these changes occur becauserepresentations for fundamental component elements are innovated,because new transformations between these elements are conceived, orbecause new interpretations arise for these elements or for theirtransformations. Therefore, it is important to note that the presentinvention relates to specific technological actualization inembodiments. Accordingly, theory or model dependent explanations herein,related to these embodiments, are presented for the purpose of teaching,the current man of the art or the current team of the art, how theseembodiments may be substantially realized in practice. Alternative orequivalent explanations for these embodiments may neither deny nor altertheir realization.

In the context of the present invention, a “server” is essentially alogical entity associated with at least one physical server wherein thephysical server is Internet communications enabled; or wherein at leastone of the at least one physical servers is Internet enabled and theremaining servers are connected there between via a substantiallycompatible data-communications topology infrastructure.

Furthermore, please note that in the context of the present invention,the “method” according to the present invention includes (A) theelectronic embodiment of the steps outlined herein; and/or (B) atelecommunications protocol for performing these method steps—includingtheir variations, preferred forms, and the likes—wherein the protocol isenabled partially on the server side and partially on the user deviceside; and/or (C) software including a program storage device readable bymachine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by themachine to perform method steps for locating and calling a phone numberin an internet accessible address-book using a visual interface phonedevice wherein such software may be a contributory-to-enabling module onthe server side and/or on the user device side; and/or (D) an article ofmanufacture and/or a computer program product including a computerusable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein forlocating and calling a phone number in an internet accessibleaddress-book using a visual interface phone device, the computerreadable program code in said article of manufacture including computerreadable program code for causing a computer to perform the method stepsaccording to the present invention—substantially as herein described andillustrated.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to understand the invention and to see how it may be carriedout in practice, embodiments including the preferred embodiment will nowbe described, by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to theaccompanying drawings. Furthermore, a more complete understanding of thepresent invention and the advantages thereof may be acquired byreferring to the following description in consideration of theaccompanying drawings, in which like reference numbers indicate likefeatures and wherein:

FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic view of the method for locating andcalling a phone number in an internet accessible address-book using avisual interface phone device according to the present invention; and

FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 respectively illustrate schematic views of twoalternative scenarios for enabling modes of the instant invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Now, as described above and in particular in the “Brief Summary Of TheInvention” section, the present invention relates to embodiments of amethod for (as a non-limiting example) locating and calling a phonenumber in an internet accessible address-book using a visual interfacephone device, which is navigated via a visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device. Turning to FIG. 1, theseembodiments of the method according to the present invention areincluding the steps: (A) a server 100, via Internet, receiving 200access to a user's address-book, wherein the address-book has more thanone record; (B) the server accepting 300 a dial-up connection from theuser, wherein the dial-up is from a visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device, and wherein the user isselected from the list: an owner of the address-book, or another a partysatisfying approval criteria of the owner; (C) the server receiving 400navigation commands from the device, and the commands are for navigatingwithin the address-book; (D) the server sending 500 at least one portionof a record in the address-book to the device, and the server arrangingfor the at least one portion to be sent (so that it will arrive) in aformat readable by the visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operativetelephone device; (E) the server accepting 600 a communications commandfrom the device, and the communications command is to establish a voiceconnection to an electronic address associated with a record of theaddress-book; and (F) the server establishing 700 the voice connectionconnecting the device to the electronic address.

According to a first embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of receiving access to a user's address-bookincludes the server accommodating a user provided copy of theaddress-book, and the accommodating is accomplished between the user andthe server via the internet. This accommodating relates to othervariations for the sharing and/or copying of data from the address-book(which may reside on the server of the instant method or will reside onsome other server that provides access to the address-book). Theseaccommodations substantially relate to issues like the security andintegrality of the address-book, such as often occur for ordinary userswho may maintain complete or partial copies of their address-book oncellular telephones, advanced POTS devices, personal electronicnotebooks, other server side storage facilities, and the likes—all ofwhich introduces complexities of synchronization of data, resolution ofversion discrepancies, and the likes. For example, the device per se mayexploit its server side connection to both place a call (or transaction)and concurrently introduce new details into the address-book. Thisscenario is typical for a case where a user is making a first call to anew number and therewith creating an association with an established ora new record of the address-book.

According to a second embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, the step of receiving access to a user'saddress-book includes granting to the server access to an Internet basedaddress-book. This substantially relates to a different security aspectof the instant invention wherein a user requires permission orauthorization or identity verification. This aspect may also includepassword codes, callbacks, encryption activities, or the likes.

Now according to a form of the second embodiment, the step of grantingthe server access includes using a predetermined Internet communicationsprotocol schedule for updating the address-book from aninternet-accessible substantially most up-to-date version of theaddress-book. A good utilization for the address-book occurs when a userdials up to the server. However, proactive automatic transactions mayoccur automatically from the user device, on a predetermined schedule,according to a predetermined threshold of necessity to initiatesynchronization or updating or archiving, or the likes. For example, auser capturing new contact information on his device may reasonablyexpect that his device will be smart enough to find an opportunity tocommunicate this new content to the address-book. Thereafter, when theuser accesses his address-book, he may find that there are incompletenew record(s) that could be improved with his attention to providingadditional details.

According to a third embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of accepting a dial-up connection includesthe server accessing an internet-accessible substantially mostup-to-date version of the address-book and incorporatingheretofore-unincorporated updates that have been made thereto. Just asthe aforementioned transactions like activities may occur by user deviceinitiation, there are other embodiments where these data managementtasks are dominated by server side initiatives.

According to a fourth embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, the step of receiving navigation commands furtherincludes the server accessing an internet-accessible substantially mostup-to-date version of the address-book and presenting content therefromto the user

According to a fifth embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of accepting a dial-up connection includesaccepting transmissions of communications occurring over a protocolselected from the list: an SS7 protocol, a Cellular telephone protocol,a VOIP protocol, and a POTS protocol. This returns to a basic concernmotivating many aspects of the instant invention—as noted in thebackground of the invention discussion. Specifically, there will remaina disparity between the bandwidth of inter-server communications anddevice with server dial-up communications. Some of the embodiments ofthe instant invention therefore accommodate linkages that are bandwidthrestricted.

According to a sixth embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of receiving navigation commands from thedevice includes interpreting a navigation command that corresponds to auser pressing at least one key on a keypad of the device.

According to one arrangement, the commands are intuitive to thekeypad—such as using an upper key to scroll record up, a lower key toscroll record down, left to pan left within a record, right to pan rightwithin a record, a central key to select; and perhaps peripheral keysfor editing functions. Other arrangements may use a prefix to activate asearch engine, and thereafter to scroll within the search results, etc.

Now according to a preferred form of the sixth embodiment, the step ofinterpreting a navigation command includes accepting transmissions ofcommunications encoded as DTMF. This form specifically relates to atypical bandwidth restrictive case, which is a goal of the instantinvention to adequately teach.

According to a seventh embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, the step of receiving navigation commands fromthe device includes interpreting voice commands of the user. Voicecommands could be accepted instead or in addition to commands given viathe keypad. The voice recognition may be on the device or on the server.

According to a eighth embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, the step of sending at least one portion of arecord in the address-book to the device includes sending of the said atleast one portion in a format readable to the phone device as a ‘callwaiting caller ID’.

According to a ninth embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of accepting a communications commandincludes interpreting a communication command that corresponds to a userpressing at least one key on a keypad of the device. This is a similarfacility to that described in the sixth embodiment variation.

Now according to a preferred form of the ninth embodiment, the step ofinterpreting a communication command includes accepting transmissions ofcommunications encoded as DTMF. Furthermore, this is a similar facilityto that described in the preferred form of the sixth embodiment.

According to a tenth embodiment variation of the method according to thepresent invention, the step of accepting a communications commandincludes interpreting a voice command of the user. This is a similarfacility to that described in the seventh embodiment variation.

According to an eleventh embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, the step of establishing the voice connectionincludes the server dialing up the electronic address and therebyconnecting the user to an entity corresponding to an electronic addressin a chosen address-book record. Returning to the background of thisinstant invention, we find that the convenience of continuing from theserver based address-book query activity to the initiation of atransaction from the server provides a great simplification for the userconvenience—among other reasons because the server may be enabled toselect most economical conduits for completing the transactioninitiation—such as by selecting a least expensive service provider.

According to a twelfth embodiment variation of the method according tothe present invention, step of establishing the voice connectionincludes selecting a linkage compliant with the electronic address andthe electronic address is selected from the list of types: POTS linkage,VOIP linkage, cellular telephone linkage, wireless pager linkage, e-maillinkage and SMS linkage.

Now, FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 describe two possible enabling implementations(‘Imp.’) out of many possible embodiments of the instant invention.

In the 1^(st) suggested implementation (FIG. 2) the Central Address BookServer interfaces with the phone company's server and arranges that thephone company's server will send the address book records requested bythe user to his phone in a format readable by the phone.

In the 2^(nd) suggested implementation (FIG. 3) the Central Address BookServer sends by him self (without interfacing with a phone company'sserver) the user requested address book records in a format readable bythe phone. In this suggested implementation the Central Address BookServer encodes the records, sends the encoded data using DTMF and thephone decodes the data using a decoding software on the phone andpresents the sent record on the phone's screen.

Now, while the invention has been described with respect to specificexamples including many presently preferred modes of carrying out theinvention, there are a few important variations, which deservediscussion in greater detail. By way of non-limiting examples, thosevariations include the Contacting of an Address-book server either by asubscriber dialing-in to the server or a call, e-mail or SMS intendedfor the subscriber going through the Address-book server, theAddress-book server based on real-time commands (real-time instructions)given by the subscriber or pre-defined rules (pre-given instructions)given by the subscriber Routing a call, e-mail or SMS to its destinationwhere the destination is a device or e-mail address or voicemail eitherof the subscriber when the server routes a call, e-mail or SMS intendedfor the subscriber or of the person the subscriber would like to contactwhen the server routes a call, e-mail or voicemail based on real-timecommands given by the subscriber.

In all of these variations, we are coordinating an activity with the CABof the instant invention. This activity may be using the CAB to helpsend and/or transform content to at least one “address” in the CAB. Thisactivity may be using the CAB to help receive and/or transform contentfrom an “outsider” who is trying to send content to the CAB user (or tomore than one CAB user—in the event that is a group property). Contentmeans audio, visual, alphanumeric, or combinations—in the format of anelectronic transmission (generally digital but occasionally still analogor mixed). Transform means conversion of voice to text, or of text tovoice, or of visual representation to labels, or of label to visualrepresentation. Transform may also mean conversion of email to SMS, orof SMS to email, or of voice-mail to text-mail, or between any twoelectronic message formats. Send means transmitting an email, SMS, voiceconnection, or the likes as appropriate. Receiving means accepting anemail, SMS, voice connection, or the likes as appropriate—and mayincluding a routing “protocol” which determines an appropriatecombination of transformation and/or further sending.

While a communication command could be, for example, to establish avoice connection as already described in details, a communicationcommand could also be to send a voice message to an e-mail. Executing acommunication command may therefore include sending an e-mail to anelectronic address delivered to the device by the server. Executing thecommunication command may include recording a voice message from theuser and at least one operation selected from the list: (A) sending thevoice message in an e-mail to the desired e-mail address; (B) sendingthe voice message in an e-mail as an audio file attachment; (C)translating the voice message into text and sending the text in ane-mail to the desired address. In addition, the sending of thetranslated voice message may include one or more of the following: (1)reviewing the translated voice message by the device user prior to beingsent; (2) reviewing the translated voice message by sending the messagetext to the device screen; (3) reviewing the translated voice message bysending the text to the device phone screen using call waiting caller IDprotocol; (4) reviewing the translated voice message by having theserver vocalize the translated message; and (5) reviewing the translatedvoice message by sending the message text to the device and by havingthe device vocalize the translated message. Executing a communicationcommand may include sending to an electronic address an item selectedfrom the list: SMS, voice mail; e-mail, a voice to text content, and atext to voice content.

Furthermore, for example, executing the communication command mayinclude: recording of a voice message from the user and sending thevoice message to an e-mail address; recording of a voice message fromthe user and sending the voice message to an e-mail address as an audiofile attachment; or recording of a voice message from the usertransforming the voice message into to text and sending the text to ane-mail address. Text transformed from a voice message may incur an extraoperational event such as sending the text back to the device andaccepting a text approval or a text amendment from the device user; suchthat the text sent to the email address is approved or amended. The textcould be sent to the device for approval by either arranging for thetext to be sent to the device in a format readable by the device so itcould be presented on the device's screen to the user forapproval/amending or the text could be transformed into a vocalizedversion and the user could hear the text on the device and decidewhether to approve it, rerecord the entire message or amend it. Once theuser approves the text translation of his voice message (whetherimmediately after hearing the first translation or after rerecordingpart of the message or amending the message text using the phone'skeypad etc), the text is sent via e-mail to the desired e-mail address.

A communication command could also be broadly defined as a request tothe server to establish a “data transmission” to an electronic addressassociated with a record of the Address-book. The server establishingthe data transmission may include any of the following (A) the serversending a device specified message selected from the list: voicemail,email, SMS, audio content, visual content, alphanumeric content, and anycombination of the aforesaid; (B) using a device specified electronicaddress type selected from the list: email address, telephone number,and voice mailbox number; (C) accepting voice content from the deviceand converting the voice content into substantially equivalentalphanumeric content; (D) sending the message to multiple recipientsdesignated by the device user; (E) sending a device specified returnreply address; or the likes.

More specifically, according to a thirteenth instant embodiment, theinteracting construction of the instant invention relates to a generalmethod for interacting via an internet accessible Address-book using avisual interface phone device, wherein the Address-book is navigated viaa visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device, themethod including the steps:

(A) a server, via Internet, receiving access to a user's Address-book,wherein the Address-book has more than one record; (B) the serveraccepting a dial-up connection from the user, wherein the dial-up isfrom a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephonedevice; (C) the server receiving navigation commands from the device,and the commands are for navigating within the Address-book; and (D) theserver sending at least one portion of a record in the Address-book tothe device, and the server arranging for the at least one portion to besent in a format readable by the visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device.

However, in particular (mutatis mutandis—as has been described in greatdetail above), the instant method further includes the following steps:(E) the server accepting a communications command from the device, andthe communications command is to establish a voice connection to anelectronic address associated with a record of the Address-book; and (F)the server establishing the voice connection. Thus, the server might beused to navigate a centrally stored address-book only or to furthercontact a person whose contact is in the address-book.

Now, mutatis mutandis, the “contacting” variant embodiments and the“routing” variant embodiments, which will forthwith be described indetail, are really corollary variants of the interacting constructionembodiments; and are likewise amenable to the respective extensions thathave been described in great detail above.

Specifically, according to a fourteenth instant embodiment, theContacting and Routing of the instant invention relates to embodiment ofa method for locating and establishing a data transmission in aninternet accessible Address-book using a visual interface phone device,wherein the Address-book is navigated via a visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device, the method including thesteps:

(A) a server, via Internet, receiving access to a user's Address-book,wherein the Address-book has more than one record; (B) the serveraccepting a dial-up connection from the user, wherein the dial-up isfrom a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephonedevice; (C) the server receiving navigation commands from the device,and the commands are for navigating within the Address-book;

(D) the server sending at least one portion of a record in theAddress-book to the device, and the server arranging for the at leastone portion to be sent in a format readable by thevisual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephone device; andthe method further includes

(E) the server accepting a communications command from the device, andthe communications command is to establish a data transmission to anelectronic address associated with a record of the Address-book; and/or(F) the server establishing the data transmission.

Thus, once the user presses ‘1’ in response to a contact e-mail on thephone's screen for example, the server does NOT have to send anothertext to the phone via CWCID but lets the user record a voice mail.However, the server might optionally send a text message to the phone'sscreen stating—“please record the message”, in which case there arefurther text messages sent by the server to the phone's screen afterreceiving a communication command from the device.

This fourteenth embodiment is related to using the “CentralAddress-book” to send voicemail to an e-mail address or to a telephonenumber or to a voicemail-box. For example, a user has an option ofsending a voicemail to a contact e-mail. While e-mail is a convenientway to communicate, it is much faster to communicate a message usingvoice than using a keyboard to type it. This “Central Address-book”actualizing embodiment provides users with the combined strength ofe-mail and voice communications; by enabling a user to send a voicemailto a contact's e-mail address. Once a user has a contact's e-mailaddress on the phone screen, then the user can press the digit ‘1’ andbe prompted to record a voice message that will be sent to the desirede-mail address. Alternatively, a typical first thing the user is askedto do when connected to the CAB is to choose whether he wants to ‘make acall’, ‘send an e-mail’, ‘send a SMS’, ‘send a fax’ etc. If the userchooses to ‘send an e-mail’ option for example he could simply navigatethe CAB records that include e-mail addresses. The CAB could deliver tothe device only the names of the people in the address book that havee-mail address associated with them without sending the actual e-mailaddresses to the device or the CAB may also send the e-mail addresses tothe device. Once the user chooses a person he would like to send ane-mail to or an e-mail address he would like to send an e-mail to, bypressing the digit ‘1’ for example when they appear on the devicescreen, the user would be prompted to record a voice message. The usercan record and review the voice mail prior to sending it. The e-mailwith the attached voice message (the voice message could be attached tothe e-mail as an audio file) could be sent from the “CentralAddress-book” e-mail address ‘on behalf of Mr. User’ or could be sent bythe “Central Address-book” server using the user's e-mail address toenable the e-mail recipient to reply directly to the user. To preventfraud, the “Central Address-book” will ask a user to confirm ownershipof his e-mail address by entering a code sent by the “CentralAddress-book” system to the user's e-mail address. It should be notedthat another option could be for the voicemail to be translated intotext using voice recognition software and sent in a text format to therecipient's e-mail or as SMS to his mobile phone or SMS enabled POTSphone, etc. Prior to the sending of the text, the “Central Address-book”system could provide the user with the translated text for approvaleither by vocalizing the text or by presenting it on the phone's callerID screen. Please note that a voice to text or a text to voice operationmay be accomplished on the server, on the device, or cooperativelythere-between.

In the context of a voice to text or a text to voice operation. pleasenote that translating voice to text using a voice line and sending it asa SMS message to a phone destination could be done by dialing (theserver phone number or *8) from a phone with a visual interface thatsupports CWCID to the CAB (Central Address Book), finding the desiredperson's phone number using the CAB and then recording a voicemail thatthe CAB server will translate to text and send to the chosen phonenumber. Alternatively, instead of looking-up the person's phone numberin a centrally located personal address-book the caller can simply enterthe desired phone number by him self. The caller will dial to a server(by dialing either the server phone number or a shortcut such as *7),will enter the phone number to which the SMS should be sent; record thevoice message and then the server would translate the voice message totext and send it as a SMS to the provided phone number. The server canoptionally let the caller review the text message, which resulted fromthe translation of the voice message, prior to sending the message byeither sending the text message to the phone's screen by, for example,taking advantage of the phone's support of CWCID or by vocalizing thetext (if the recorded voice message is vocalized the caller could useany phone, not just phones that would enable him to visually navigate).The user could either approve the message for sending or amend it orrecord it again. That means that this could also be an applicationindependent of the CAB method and/or system.

Clearly, there are other portions of the instant method that canaccommodate this variation; albeit for reader convenience we propose anexample wherein the “server arranging” in step (D) includes sub-step:(E1) the server accepting a communications command from the device, andthe communications command is to establish a data transmission to anelectronic address associated with a record of the Address-book; and(F1) the server establishing the data transmission. Nevertheless, one orboth of these E1 and/or F1 may be an extension of the basic instantmethod without requiring any logic architecture relating them to the“server arranging” sub-step.

Now, according to one constructive mode of this fourteenth embodiment,the server establishing the data transmission includes the serversending a device specified message selected from the list: voicemail,email, Facsimile, SMS, audio content, visual content, alphanumericcontent, and any combination of the aforesaid. Essentially, this modeallows for the facilitation of telecommunications other than justplacing an ordinary voice to voice telephone call.

According to another constructive mode of this fourteenth embodiment,the server establishing the data transmission includes using a devicespecified electronic address type selected from the list: email address,telephone number, and voice mailbox number. Essentially, this modeallows for the use of any electronic address stored in the address bookto be used to facilitate a telecommunications transmission orinteraction.

According to a further constructive mode of this fourteenth embodiment,establishing the data transmission includes accepting voice content fromthe device and converting the voice content into substantiallyequivalent alphanumeric content. This is a facile service aspect ofthese embodiments whereby speech to text transformation software isapplied in the chain of processing events so that a user may input avoice message while the actual final transmission is a text message.Likewise, the inverse software may be applied whereby a text message istransformed into a synthesized voice rendition, etc.

According to yet another constructive mode of this fourteenthembodiment, the user can elect whether to send a message to onerecipient or multiple recipients. In one implementation, once the userissues a communication command to e-mail a specific recipient, the CABmay ask the user (either vocally or by sending text to the devicescreen) ‘press 1 if you are interested in sending the message to anotherrecipient or 2 otherwise’. If the user chooses to send the message tomore recipients the CAB will let the user further navigate the addressbook and designate additional recipients prior to being prompted torecord a voice message that will be sent to all the recipients.

And finally, according to a different constructive mode of thisfourteenth embodiment, establishing the data transmission may includesending a return reply address (such as a phone number of a specificdevice or an e-mail address).

Summarizing some aspects of the fourteenth embodiment, the “CentralAddress-book” system (method) is facile for the sending of voicemail toan e-mail or to a phone number or phone number voice mail-box. Using ahigh quality voice recognition system, the voice mail could also betranslated to text and sent via e-mail or SMS to a destination. Thevoice mail will be sent either from the “Central Address-book” on behalfof ‘Mr. Subscriber’ or the Central Address-book can send e-mails usingthe subscriber's e-mail address so a person receiving the voice mail inan e-mail could reply directly to the subscriber. It should be notedthat the “Central Address-book” may require the subscriber to confirmthe ownership of the e-mail address he would like the CentralAddress-book system to be using when sending an e-mail on his behalfsuch as by providing the system with a code sent by the system to thee-mail address claimed by the user to be his.

For example, in case the voice mail was sent to the recipient using theuser's e-mail address, regardless of how the recipient answers thee-mail—whether as text or by attaching a reply voice mail to the e-mail(the voice mail could be attached as an audio file to the e-mail), thereply would be sent to the user's e-mail address that was used to sendthe user's voice mail.

In case the voice mail was sent to the recipient using the CentralAddress-book system e-mail address (for example 2121234567@CAB.com wherethe 212-123-4567 is the user's phone number or John_Smith@CAB.com whereJohn Smith is the user's name), the recipient will be able to see fromthe e-mail address which telephone number or which user is responsiblefor the voice mail attached to the e-mail; and the Central Address-bookwould know to whom it should route the reply, in case the user repliesto the e-mail. The reply, if sent to an address of the CAB, would bereceived by the Central Address-book that based on recognizing whetherthe reply e-mail is text based or has a voice attachment, would routethe message based on routing instructions given by the user. Forexample, a voicemail attached to the e-mail could be delivered by theCentral Address-book—calling the user on his phone (mobile or landlineor any number given by the user to receive voicemails replies) or byplacing the voice mail in his voice mail system or by translating totext and sending to an e-mail address, etc.

Furthermore, in specific, according to a fifteenth instant embodiment, arouting construction of the instant invention relates to an embodimentof a method for routing a message (e.g. ordinary or transformed contentsuch as e-mail, voice call, SMS, etc) using an internet accessiblecentrally located personal Address-book (CAB), the method including thesteps:

(A) a server, via Internet, receiving access to a user's Address-book,wherein the Address-book has more than one record; (B) the serveraccepting an incoming call or e-mail or SMS or fax or message to asubscriber (CAB user);

(C) using the caller/sender contact details from the incoming “item”(call, email, SMS, etc.) and/or from data in the CAB, the serverChecking the subscriber address book for routing instructions (e.g. andthe routing instructions may be specifically for a person, a category orthe entire address book, etc.);

(D) the server providing the routing instructions—or performing all orpart of the routing.

Checking may include checking the current location of the subscriber,time of day and subscriber status, all conditions impacting the routingrules pre-defined by the subscriber. The subscriber location may bederived from the subscriber's mobile phone location. The subscriberstatus may be derived from the subscriber's calendar (in a meeting,Doctor's appointment etc).

Among the objects of this fifteenth embodiment, we note thatgeo-location based group calling (designating simultaneous signaling orringing of proximate telecommunications devices—e.g. mobile telephoneand land-line telephone) may be used in conjunction with the “CentralAddress-book” For example, incoming calls to a mobile phone willsimultaneously ring on a pre-registered landline that the mobile phoneis next to (e.g. calculated as being substantially proximate to). Theuser may specify that only calls from people under a user or systemdesignated category or people in the “Central Address-book” will also berouted to the landline next to the mobile phone. Alternatively, onlypeople under a different user or system designated category of the“Central Address-book” will not be routed to the landline (for examplethe doctor or the lover or a stock broker and an astrologer will onlycall the mobile). The “Central Address-book” may also have pre-setrouting rules tied to particular or pre-registered locations. Forexample, people in the “Central Address-book” under personal categorywill be routed to landline next to me only when I am home, at work onlyto my mobile. Similarly, at work, only people under the businesscategory of the “Central Address-book” will be routed to the worklandline, other people such as friends, won't be routed. It is importantto note that the routing instructions attached to specific contacts orcategories of the Central Address-book and/or to the entire address-bookcould be provided to the Central Address-book system using a phone witha visual interface or by simply using a web based interface giving theuser access to his centrally located personal address book.

Thus, according to one constructive mode of this fifteenth embodiment,accepting routing rules (using a phone's visual interface or web basedinterface for example) includes subjecting the establishment of a groupcall to routing rules designated by the user. Once a mobile phone hasbeen determined to be next to a pre-registered landline (that the useris interested in having the option of answering incoming calls to themobile phone on), a group calling function is established in the centraloffice; a group call that is subject to routing rules which wereestablished by the user using his Central Address-book. For example, anincoming call to the user's mobile phone from a work colleague definedin the Central Address-book under the ‘Business’ category will not berouted by the central office to both the mobile phone and the landlinedespite the group calling since the user asked that only calls to hismobile phone from people defined in the Central Address-book under the‘Personal’ category will be routed also to his home landline.Preferably, establishing a routing protocol includes designating the atleast one electronic address (electronic address could be a phonenumber) as a call forwarding or group calling extension when thegeo-location specification for the device is substantially proximate toa physical location associated with the respective at least oneelectronic address.

For example, a CAB server located at a cellular carrier central officecould have the following routing rule defined by a subscriber: the homephone number of the subscriber will be used with the subscriber's mobilephone number for Group Calling (and the group calling will beestablished only when the subscriber will be determined to be at home)for incoming calls originating from people in the subscriber's‘Personal’ category of the address book. Other incoming calls to thesubscriber's mobile phone from people not in the subscriber's ‘Personal’category of the address book will be routed only to the mobile phonedespite the fact the subscriber is at home.

Nevertheless, according to another constructive mode of this fifteenthembodiment, routing instructions provided by the user includedesignating at least one record of the address book for a routing statusselected from the list: priority routing, conditional routing, andpredetermined messaging routing. Priority routing may be used to bestappreciate when a circumstance demands making a best effort to allow orfacilitate telecommunications—such as reaching an emergency service oroverriding existing telecommunications in preference to an importantspecial telecommunications (e.g. a call from the boss will put any othertelecommunications on hold, etc.). Conditional routing may be as a meansfor establishing a rules set to include specific address book entries,time of day, location, mode of telecommunications, level of activity, orthe likes.

Now, we will relate to a few non-limiting examples of routing incomingcalls to a landline based on the mobile phone location using the CAB(Using CAB to route incoming calls to different phone numbers,voicemail, e-mail with a voice attachment, e-mail with voice translatedto text etc).

For example, the caller ID of an incoming call to a user's landline,whose personal Address book is stored at the POTS central office CABserver, could be used to locate a specific CAB record or a rule set“decision” designating that the call from a specific person should berouted to the mobile phone when the user is not next to the POTSlandline. In one possible implementation, the CAB server at the POTScentral office will know that the user is not next to the POTS landlinesince a software located on the mobile phone will recognize that themobile phone is no longer next to the POTS landline and send a SMS tothe CAB server located at the POTS central office informing it that themobile phone is no longer next to the landline. In another example,according to the caller ID a routing rule will be found that a call frompeople in the category the caller belongs to, should be routed to avoice mail system where a voice message will be recorded, translated totext and sent as a SMS to the user's mobile phone when he is not next tothe landline.

Using the CAB web interface, a user can define how incoming calls fromcontacts belonging to certain categories will be handled as well as howincoming calls from specific contacts will be handled. For example, allcalls but calls from the user's boss to the user's mobile will be routedto voicemail when the user is in a meeting. Voicemails left by peoplebelonging to the ‘business’ category of the user's CAB will also beforwarded to the user's e-mail.

The geo-location based group calling will be used in conjunction withthe CAB for both routing incoming calls to the mobile phone as well asrouting incoming calls to a landline. For example, only incoming callsto the mobile phone from people under the ‘personal’ category will berouted to the home phone in addition to the mobile phone when the useris recognized to be at home. Incoming calls from people in othercategories, including the ‘business’ category, will be routed only tothe mobile phone.

When at work, incoming calls to the mobile phone from people under the‘business’ category will be routed to the work phone in addition to themobile phone. People under the ‘personal’ category will be routed to themobile only. (e.g. The family doctor calls will always be routed only tothe mobile phone.)

Once the mobile phone is determined to be no longer next to a landline,a “CAB service provider” server located at the landline company centraloffice will be informed (via a SMS sent from the geo-location basedgroup calling application located on the mobile phone for example) andincoming calls to a home landline will be routed according to the callernumber to cell phones of different members of the household. Forexample, callers that their phone number is included in the man's CABwill be forwarded to the man's cell phone when he is not at home. Inanother example, callers that their phone number is included in both theman and women (residing in the same household) Central Address Books (weassume that from the same home landline, each family member could accesshis own centrally located personal address book) will be forwarded toman's and woman's mobile phones simultaneously and who ever picks up thephone first will answer. Using their CAB users can define routing rulesfor routing incoming calls to their mobile phone depending on theirlocation (home, office, etc), time of day, CAB category, status (asreflected in their diary for example—in a meeting, busy, free etc. Thediary could be a central diary connected to the Central Address Book),specific contact or any combination thereof.

Using the CAB, users can define routing rules for routing incoming callsto their landline depending on their mobile phone location, time of day,status (as reflected in their diary for example—in a meeting, busy, freeetc. The diary could be a central diary connected to the Central AddressBook), CAB category, specific contact or any combination thereof.

Now, in addition to the embodiments and variations heretofore presented,there are other noteworthy aspects for extending functionality of thecentral address book method.

One aspect of extended functionality relates to Synchronizing CABs usedby landline and cellular operators. In order to provide a subscriberwith access to his CAB, both on his landline as well as on his mobilephone, Central Address-book servers could be placed both at the landlineprovider Central Office as well as the cellular carrier office. TheCentral Address-book servers operating at the landline and cellularcarriers premises, will keep their CAB databases synchronized using asecure connection over the web for example.

Another aspect of extended functionality relates to Using CAB to improveincoming calls Caller ID. An incoming call phone number will be matchedwith the person's centrally located address book (CAB) records. In caseof match, the name of the calling person will be taken from the person'sCAB instead of a public database.

Now, a further aspect of extended functionality relates to Using CAB tocall using client software. A telecom provider giving its users theoption to call from their computers using a VOIP application or a WiFidedicated phone can use an open API provided by CAB to enable the userto browse the CAB from his VOIP client software.

Furthermore, yet another aspect of extended functionality relates toStatistics building based on CAB usage specifically as well as callsmade by the user in general (with or without the CAB). Statistics arebuilt of the numbers most commonly dialed by the user.

In addition, there is an aspect of extended functionality that relatesto Synchronizing a local mobile handset address book with CAB based onCAB statistics.

The most commonly dialed numbers by the user are sent (wirelessly viaSMS for example) to the user's mobile phone address book to provide theuser with a local address book. In case of a mobile subscriber roamingwhere he can not visually navigate the CAB, he can use the mobile'sphone address book that was populated by the CAB or alternatively gainaccess to the entire CAB by dialing to the CAB and navigating throughthe CAB using voice commands.

Finally, there is a further aspect of extended functionality thatrelates to using the CAB to build and provide access to a centralrepository of e-mails, SMS, call records and voice mails. Using a webinterface, a user can view the e-mail correspondence, SMS correspondenceand records of calls (to and from) for each contact in his CAB. Recordsof calls will include calls made and received on both a user's landlineas well as a user's mobile phone (with or without the CAB).

Now, it can be appreciated that there are many variations of a “CentralAddress Book (CAB) oriented system” in accordance with instant method.These variations may be embodied partially, individually, and/or incombination. In conclusion, we will now itemize some of thesevariations:

-   -   I. Building/Editing CAB via exporting of existing address book        or usage of web interface: User can export its Microsoft Outlook        Contacts or web based address book (such as provided by Yahoo)        by exporting the contacts in those applications into a CSV file.        The user will then upload the CSV file to the CAB web site. The        user can create an address book using the CAB web site interface        or edit an exported address book using the interface.    -   II. Synchronizing other Address books with CAB: The user can        download client software that will monitor its contacts and        whenever it will recognize the addition of new contacts, the        software will give the user the opportunity to update the CAB        with the new contacts.    -   III. Synchronizing CABs used by landline and cellular operators:        In order to provide a subscriber with access to his CAB both on        his landline as well as his mobile phone, CAB servers could be        placed both at the landline provider Central Office as well as        the cellular carrier office. The CAB servers, operating at the        landline and cellular carriers premises, could keep their CAB        databases synchronized by using a secure connection over the        web—for example: The CAB servers located at the central offices        of the landline company and the cellular company could be owned        by the landline company and the cellular company respectively or        by a third party offering the service directly to subscribers.        Regardless of who owns and operates the CAB servers it makes        sense to synchronize them for the benefit of the subscriber that        uses both the landline and the cellular.    -   IV. Accessing & Navigating CAB: The user will access the CAB        from a landline by using any phone supporting CWCID (Call        Waiting Caller ID) to dial *8. From a mobile phone the user will        dial ‘2’ (the digit ‘2’ will be programmed to dial the “CAB        service provider” server number the same way the digit ‘1’ is        programmed to dial the voicemail server number). Once connected        to the “CAB service provider” server, the user's phone screen        will recognize the user and the following message will appear on        the phone's screen ‘John's Address Book’ (in case the user's        name is obviously John). The phone number of the phone used by        the user to call the “CAB service provider” server will be used        by the server to identify the user and provide him with the        correct address book. The user has the option of protecting his        address book with a PIN code. Once connected, the user will use        his phone's keypad to navigate his centrally located personal        address book. The user's commands (uplink) will be sent via DTMF        and in response the “CAB service provider” server will deliver        the CAB records to the phone's caller ID screen (downlink). The        user will move to the next record by pressing the # key, to the        previous record by pressing the * key, to the next level by        pressing the digit ‘1’ and to the previous level by pressing the        digit ‘0’. The CAB is arranged as a tree where the contact names        are the branches and each of the contact's phone numbers or        e-mail are the leaves of the contact. For example, a user        looking for ‘John Bell’ could sort through the names in his CAB        using the # key, once the name ‘John Bell’ appears on the        screen, the user will press the digit ‘1’ and then will be able        to sort through John Bell's contact numbers and e-mail. When the        phone number the user is interested in reaching will be on the        screen (John Bell's Work number for example) the user will press        the digit ‘1’ again and the “CAB service provider” server will        connect the user with the desired phone number. If the user        realized that he chose the wrong name, he can always press the        digit ‘0’ and go back up one level in the tree to the names        level. The user can jump directly to a certain name by entering        the first or last name of the contact's name using the keypad.        Once finished entering the name the user will press the digit        ‘1’. The CAB in response will let the user scroll through all        the names matching the letter combinations created by the        pressed digits. The user can go back to the CAB names level by        pressing ‘0’ or the desired name by pressing ‘1’. A user, not        comfortable with a tree structure, can choose to have his CAB        organized as one level where contacts' different phone numbers        and e-mails are organized sequentially.    -   V. Using CAB to call: Once a user has his desired contact phone        number on the phone's screen, the user will press the digit ‘1’        and the “CAB service provider” server will connect the user to        its desired destination. The call record including date, time        and duration will be reported to the user by its telecom        provider as all other calls made by the subscriber since the        “CAB service provider” server once receiving the instruction to        connect the user to the desired number will transfer the number        to the telecom provider that will connect the user to his        destination.    -   VI. Using CAB to send voicemail to e-mail or phone: A user has        the option of sending a voicemail to a contact e-mail. While        e-mail is a convenient way to communicate, it is much faster to        communicate a message using voice than using a keyboard to type        it. CAB provides users with the combined strength of e-mail and        voice communications by enabling a user to send a voicemail to a        contact's e-mail address. Once a user has a contact's e-mail        address on the phone screen the user can press the digit ‘1’ and        be prompted to record a voice message that will be sent to the        desired e-mail address. The user can record and review the voice        mail prior to sending it. The e-mail with the attached voice        message could be sent from the CAB e-mail address ‘on behalf of        Mr. User’ or could be sent by the CAB server using the user's        e-mail address to enable the e-mail recipient to reply directly        to the user. To prevent fraud, the CAB will ask a user to        confirm ownership of his e-mail address by entering a code sent        by the CAB to the user's e-mail address. It should be noted that        another option could be for the voicemail to be translated into        text using voice recognition software and sent in a text format        to the recipient's e-mail. Prior to the sending of the text, the        CAB could provide the user with the translated text for approval        either by vocalizing the text or by presenting it on the phone's        caller ID screen.    -   VII. Using voice commands with CAB: Users can access CAB from        any phone, using voice commands to call or e-mail voicemail to        desired contacts. The voice commands will be deciphered by the        system using voice recognition software.    -   VIII. Using CAB to improve incoming calls Caller ID: An incoming        call phone number will be matched with the person's centrally        located address book (CAB) records. In case of match, the name        of the calling person will be taken from the person's CAB        instead of a public database.    -   IX. Using CAB to call using client software: A telecom provider        giving its users the option to call from their computers using a        VOIP application can use an open API provided by CAB to enable        the user to browse the CAB from his VOIP client software.    -   X. Using CAB to route incoming calls to different phone numbers,        voicemail, e-mail in a voice format: Using the CAB web        interface, a user can define how incoming calls from contacts        belonging to certain categories will be handled as well as how        incoming calls from specific contacts will be handled.

For example, all calls but calls from the user's boss to the user'smobile will be routed to voicemail when the user is in a meeting.Voicemails left by people belonging to the ‘business’ category of theuser's CAB will also be forwarded to the user's e-mail.

The geo-location based group calling will be used in conjunction withthe CAB for both routing incoming calls to the mobile phone as well asrouting incoming calls to a landline. For example, only incoming callsto the mobile phone from people under the ‘personal’ category will berouted to the home phone in addition to the mobile phone when the useris recognized to be at home. Incoming calls from people in othercategories, including the ‘business’ category, will be routed only tothe mobile phone.

When at work, incoming calls to the mobile phone from people under the‘business’ category will be routed to the work phone in addition to themobile phone. People under the ‘personal’ category will be routed to themobile only.

The family doctor calls will always be routed only to the mobile phone.

Once the mobile phone is determined to be no longer next to a landline,a CAB server located at the landline company central office will beinformed (via a SMS sent from the geo-location based group callingapplication located on the mobile phone for example) and incoming callsto a home landline will be routed according to the caller number to cellphones of different members of the household. For example, callers thattheir phone number is included in the man's CAB will be forwarded to theman's cell phone when he is not at home. In another example, callersthat their phone number is included in both the man and women (residingin the same household) Central Address Books (we assume that from thesame home landline, each family member could access his own centrallylocated personal address book) will be forwarded to man's and woman'smobile phones simultaneously and who ever picks up the phone first willanswer. Using their CAB users can define routing rules for routingincoming calls to their mobile phone depending on their location (home,office, etc), time of day, CAB category, specific contact, status (asreflected in a central diary) or any combination thereof. Using the CABusers can define routing rules for routing incoming calls to theirlandline depending on their mobile phone location, time of day, CABcategory, specific contact, status (as reflected in a central diary) orany combination thereof.

-   -   XI. Using CAB to route incoming e-mails to different e-mail        addresses, different phone # via SMS, different phone # via        voiced text: Using the CAB web interface, a user can ask to be        alerted with a SMS when e-mails from certain contacts in the CAB        arrive into his inbox. The user can also ask to receive specific        e-mails in a voice format into his voicemail. Such a service        could provide the user with an immediate access to an important        e-mail if he has no e-mail access for an extended time.    -   XII. Using the CAB to build and provide access to a central        repository of e-mails, SMS, call records and voice mails: Using        a web interface, a user can view the e-mail correspondence, SMS        correspondence and records of calls (to and from) for each        contact in his CAB. Records of calls will include calls made and        received on both a user's landline as well as a user's mobile        phone (with or without the CAB).    -   XIII. Sending SMS using the CAB phone interface: Instead of        entering a SMS message using the phone keypad, the SMS message        will be given using voice, the system will translate the voice        message to text using a voice recognition software and will        enable the user to approve the correctness of the translation by        either presenting the translated text on the phone's caller ID        screen or by vocalizing the translated text. Once the user        approves the translation, the text message is sent. In case the        user is not happy with the translation, he can repeat the        message or part of it.    -   XIV. Receiving SMS using the CAB phone interface: An SMS could        be sent to any landline phone supporting CWCID. The phone will        ring and the caller ID screen will state ‘SMS from phone #’ of        the sender. Once the user answers the phone, the caller ID        screen will present the SMS, which the user could scroll through        by pressing the # key to get the next part of the message or        the * key to the get the previous part of the SMS. The user        could further reply to the message with a SMS as described above        (using voice that will be translated to text) or with a SMS        chosen out of a few available templates. By pressing the digit        ‘1’ when reviewing the SMS message the user is given the option        to reply. When answering with a template, on the phone screen        appear possible answers the user can scroll through (using the #        and * keys) and choose from such as ‘ok’, ‘will do it’, ‘can not        do it’, ‘have a problem, call me’, ‘can not do it. Call me’ etc.        Once the user finds the reply of his choice he presses the digit        ‘1’ again to have the SMS sent.    -   XV. Using CAB to auto-complete e-mail addresses in web based        e-mail via a java script: Users can benefit from an        auto-complete of e-mail addresses they start to write in a web        based e-mail application via a java script.    -   XVI. Statistics building based on CAB usage: Based on calls made        by the user, statistics are built of the numbers most commonly        dialed by the user.    -   XVII. Synchronizing a local mobile handset address book with CAB        based on CAB statistics: The most commonly dialed numbers by the        user are wirelessly sent to the user's mobile phone address book        to provide the user with a local address book. In case of a        mobile subscriber roaming, he can gain access to the entire CAB        using voice commands or to the numbers most commonly dialed by        him from the handset local address book.

Returning now to the receiving of routing instructions from the user andthe execution of the instruction when receiving incoming communicationintended for the user, the server may receive routing instructions fromthe user using a web interface for example. Upon receiving an incomingcommunication intended for the user, based on the user's location as itappears in the CAB records (the CAB server is updated with the user'slocation every time that it changes. For example, a geo-location basedgroup calling software located on a mobile phone will inform the CABserver using SMS when the user gets home, when he leaves his home, whenhe gets to the office, when he leaves the office etc), based on time ofday, the caller/sender ID and the routing instructions forcalls/messages originating from this caller/sender or people that belongto the category the caller/sender belong to, based on the communicationformat (voice, text, video etc), based on the user's status (asreflected in a central diary) etc the server will determine to whereshould the incoming communication be routed and in what format. Theserver will either route the communication it self or provide therouting instructions to another server that will route thecommunication. The routing instructions may further include theestablishing of a data transmission or a voice connection to at leastone electronic address associated with a record of the address-book. Theinstructions may include accepting a substantially real-timegeo-location specification for the device. Establishing a routingprotocol may include designating the at least one electronic address asa call forwarding or group calling extension when the geo-locationspecification for the device is substantially proximate to a physicallocation associated with the respective at least one electronic address.The routing instructions may include designating at least one record ofthe address book for a routing status selected from the list: priorityrouting, conditional routing, and predetermined messaging routing. Thereceived routing instructions may include establishing a voiceconnection to an electronic address associated with a record of theaddress book, and executing the routing instructions may include theserver establishing the routing by establishing a voice connection.Similarly, receiving routing instructions may include sending a voicemail to an e-mail address associated with a record of the address book,and executing the routing instructions may include the server recordinga voice mail and e-mailing it to the desired e-mail address.

While the invention has been described with respect to specific examplesincluding many presently preferred modes of carrying out the invention,those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are numerousvariations and permutations of the above described methods, systems, andtechniques that fall within the spirit and scope of the invention as setforth in the appended claims.

1. A method for interacting via an internet accessible address-bookusing a visual interface phone device, the method including the steps:(A) a server, via Internet, receiving access to a user's address-book,wherein the address-book has more than one record; (B) the serveraccepting a dial-up connection from the user, wherein the dial-up isfrom a visual-interface-enabled voice-network-operative telephonedevice; (C) the server receiving navigation commands from the device,and the commands are for navigating within the address-book; and (D) theserver sending at least one portion of a record in the address-book tothe device, and the server arranging for the at least one portion to besent in a format readable by the visual-interface-enabledvoice-network-operative telephone device.
 2. The method of claim 1further including steps: (E) the server accepting a communicationscommand from the device, and (F) the server executing the communicationcommand.
 3. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving accessto a user's address-book includes the server accommodating a userprovided copy of the address-book, and the accommodating is accomplishedbetween the user and the server via the internet.
 4. The method of claim1 wherein the step of receiving access to a user's address-book includesgranting to the server access to an internet based address-book.
 5. Themethod according to claim 4 wherein the step of granting the serveraccess includes using a predetermined internet communications protocolschedule for updating the address-book from an internet-accessiblesubstantially most up-to-date version of the address-book.
 6. The methodof claim 1 wherein the step of accepting a dial-up connection includesthe server accessing an internet-accessible substantially mostup-to-date version of the address-book and incorporating heretoforeunincorporated updates that have been made thereto.
 7. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the step of receiving navigation commands furtherincludes the server accessing an internet-accessible substantially mostup-to-date version of the address-book and presenting content therefromto the user.
 8. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of accepting adial-up connection includes accepting transmissions of communicationsoccurring over a protocol selected from the list: an SS7 protocol, aCellular telephone protocol, a VOIP protocol, and a POTS protocol. 9.The method of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving navigation commandsfrom the device includes interpreting a navigation command thatcorresponds to a user pressing at least one key on a keypad of thedevice.
 10. The method according to claim 9 wherein the step ofinterpreting a navigation command includes accepting transmissions ofcommunications encoded as DTMF.
 11. The method of claim 1 wherein thestep of receiving navigation commands from the device includesinterpreting voice commands of the user.
 12. The method of claim 1wherein the step of sending at least one portion of a record in theaddress-book to the device includes sending of the said at least oneportion in a format readable to the phone device as a ‘call waitingcaller ID’.
 13. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of accepting acommunications command includes interpreting a communication commandthat corresponds to a user pressing at least one key on a keypad of thedevice.
 14. The method according to claim 13 wherein the step ofinterpreting a communication command includes accepting transmissions ofcommunications encoded as DTMF.
 15. The method of claim 2 wherein thestep of accepting a communications command includes interpreting a voicecommand of the user.
 16. The method of claim 2 wherein executing thecommunications command includes establishing a voice connection with anelectronic address delivered to the device by the server and the serverdialing up the electronic address; thereby connecting the user to anentity corresponding to the electronic address in a chosen address-bookrecord.
 17. The method of claim 2 wherein executing the communicationcommand includes recording of a voice message from the user and sendingthe voice message to an e-mail address.
 18. The method of claim 2wherein executing the communication command includes recording of avoice message from the user and sending the voice message to an e-mailaddress as an audio file attachment.
 19. The method of claim 2 whereinexecuting the communication command includes recording of a voicemessage from the user transforming the voice message into text andsending the text to an e-mail address.
 20. The method of claim 19wherein sending the text includes sending the text back to the deviceand accepting a text approval or a text amendment from the device user;such that the text sent to the email address is approved.
 21. The methodof claim 20 wherein sending the text back to the device includesarranging for the text to be sent in a format viewable on a screen ofthe device.
 22. The method of claim 19 wherein sending the text to anemail address includes transforming the text into a vocalized version,sending the version back to the device and accepting a version approvalor a version amendment from the device user; such that the emailincludes the approved version.